Dr. Dimitrios Tzovaras is the Director of Central Directorate and Chairman of the Board of Directors of CERTH since December 2020. Prior to his current position and since October 2013 he was the Director of the Information Technologies Institute of CERTH (CERTH/ITI), while he remains the Head of the Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory of CERTH/ITI. He received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering (1992) and the Ph.D. in “2D and 3D Image Compression” (1997) from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and holds the position of Researcher A’ of CERTH since 2010.
For eight years (2010-2018) he was a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London (Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Intelligent Systems & Networks group), while currently he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Nicosia (Institute For the Future – IFF).
His main research interests include network and visual analytics for computer vision, virtual and augmented reality, visual analytics, multidimensional data analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence. He is also deeply engaged in applied research aiming at providing innovative solutions in the fields of Energy, Medicine, Industry 4.0, Transport and Culture.
Dr. Tzovaras has conducted very important scientific and research work (826 publications in total), which is summarized in 3 books, 54 book chapters, 200 publications in International Journals with Referees and 569 presentations in International Conferences with Referees. Dr. Tzovaras has acted as a reviewer of a large number of submitted scientific papers for a plethora of International Journals and Magazines, and International Scientific Conferences, and has been Associate Editor of “EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing (JASP)” and “Computer Journal” and Senior Associate Editor of IEEE’s international acknowledged scientific journals “Transactions on Image Processing” and “Signal Processing Letters”.
Since 1992 he has participated with his team in more than 220 Research and Development projects funded by the EU and the GSRT and has concluded industrial contracts with leading companies in the world, such as Samsung. He has an extensive management record having been the project coordinator of 22 projects and the technical/ scientific manager of 18 projects, during the last 5 years.
Since 2007 he is involved in various activities, management committees and councils relevant to the definition of R&D policy for both the European Commission and the National Agencies (elected member of the National Representatives of Greece in the European Commission for the FP7 Programme of International Cooperation, a member of Board of the National Documentation Centre (EKT) for a three-year term, since March 2014).
Dr Dimitrios Tzovaras is actively involved in innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives. He is the co-founder of six (6) spin-offs of CERTH/ITI and the initiator of one of the most innovative activities in the area of electronically equipped infrastructures in Greece, the near zero Energy Smart House, an officially recognized Digital Innovation Hub of the EU. He is also the coordinator of Mega Project 3, Artificial Intelligence and Simulation Applications of the 4th Generation Technologic Park, ThessInTec. He is the owner of two patents in the scientific areas of virtual reality and health, whereas in 2018 he has applied for two new patents related to robotics in rehabilitation health and financial innovative research (micro-payments).
